Jordan Kobritz

Articles matching tag: CBA

How times have changed in Major League Baseball (MLB). No, we don’t mean the game on the field, although recent rule changes have sparked fan debate and lit up social media. The big change, one that has fattened the bottom line for everyone involved in the game - owners, players, media outlets and everyone else who generates revenue from the sport – is labor peace.
Between 1972 – six years after the formation of the Major League Baseball Players Association (MLBPA) - and 1994 there were eight work stoppages in the sport, five strikes by the players and three lockouts by the owners. However, since 1995 MLB has had labor peace and not coincidentally, the sport has flourished. In the past 21 years, the parties have successfully negotiated five Collective Bargaining Agreements (CBA) without an interruption in play. During the same period, the other three Major League team sports – the NFL, NBA and NHL – have shut down a total of five times.

When Kevin Durant waved goodbye to the Oklahoma City Thunder last month and signed a two-year $54.3 million contract with the Golden State Warriors, most NBA observers predicted multiple championships in the Warriors’ future.
That may prove to be true. After all, last year the Warriors finished the regular season with the best record in NBA history and fell one game short of winning the championship. They lost to LeBron James and the Cleveland Cavaliers who stormed back from a three-games-to-one deficit and unceremoniously knocked the Warriors from their anointed throne. That collapse proved, once again, that games are won on the field of play, not in the blogosphere. So it would be wise to hold the champagne and parades for the time being.

On the eve of the opening of NFL training camps, a number of so-called experts took the opportunity to comment on the CBA that was approved in August 2011. Their almost unanimous conclusion was the league took the players to the woodshed. Whether that’s true or false depends on the prism through which you view labor negotiations.
There is little doubt that teams are making more money today than they did prior to 2011. The publicly owned Green Bay Packers, the only NFL team that is required to divulge financial information, had net income of $23.3 million in the two years prior to the current CBA and $85.8 million in the two years since. All teams are more profitable today than they were prior to 2011, due in part to increased revenues.